High Society

I've had a song running through my mind - the way one does at times.  Actually, with me there is rarely a time when a tune of some sort is not running in my brain.  It can become aggravating in the extreme when the same tune runs time after time after time.  As Macbeth said, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until the last syllable of recorded time".  (That is about the only Shakespeare quote I can really remember from the days when I studied English Literature for my GCE 'O' and 'A' levels.)

As I was saying, I've had this tune running through my mind, a tune from the musical High Society.  There's a film to conjure up the memories: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and the divine Grace Kelly, with whom I was deeply in love.  Sadly, my love was totally unrequited.

Anyway, that song.  "What a swell party this is".  It is particularly apt as the OB and I drove down into deepest Somerset on Saturday for a party on my cousin's farm which was held to celebrate a number of significant anniversaries in the family such as 70th and 40th birthdays.  And it really was a swell party.  Two adjoining barns had been cleared of all the clutter that is normally stored in them (I wonder where it went?) and the walls had been given a quick coat of white paint.  Outside those barns a large marquee had been erected and tables and chairs laid out out.  Various salads were provided, along with several barbecues for people to cook the meat they had brought with them.  Sundry desserts were also supplied, along with seemingly never ending bottles of wine and barrels of beer.

A couple of smaller gazebos had been erected in the paddock off the yard, as well as a bouncy castle for the children's amusement.

The weather could have been kinder but wasn't bad.  A couple of showers - one particularly heavy - meant the the slide on the bouncy castle became extremely slippery, much to the enjoyment of the children who were all drenched to the skin.  The adults, meanwhile, ate more than their fill, drank (in a few cases a tad too much) and chatted.  Given that there were about 60 or 70 people there, chatting was easy, even for those like me who have little small talk.

It all seemed to me a little un-English, reminiscent of the way French villages hold feasts with tables spread out under the plum trees and the whole village turning out.  Great.